The present invention relates to display of electronic documents and more particularly to method and apparatus for augmenting electronic document display with features to enhance the experience of reading an electronic document on a display.
Increasingly, readers of documents are being called upon to assimilate vast quantities of information in a short period of time. To meet the demands placed upon them, readers find they must read documents xe2x80x9chorizontally,xe2x80x9d rather than xe2x80x9cvertically,xe2x80x9d i.e., they must scan, skim, and browse sections of interest in multiple documents rather than read and analyze a single document from beginning to end.
Documents are now more and more available in electronic form. Some documents are available electronically by virtue of their having been locally created using word processing software. Other electronic documents are accessible via the Internet. Yet others may become available in electronic form by virtue of being scanned in, copied, or faxed. See commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,978,477, entitled AUTOMATIC AND TRANSPARENT DOCUMENT ARCHIVING, the contents of which are herein incorporated by reference.
However, the mere availability of documents in electronic form does not assist the reader in confronting the challenges of assimilating information quickly. Indeed, many time-challenged readers still prefer paper documents because of their portability and the ease of flipping through pages.
Certain tools exist to take advantage of the electronic form documents to assist harried readers. Tools exist to search for documents both on the Internet and locally. However, once the document is identified and retrieved, further search capabilities are limited to keyword searching. Automatic summarization techniques have also been developed but have limitations in that they are not personalized. They summarize based on general features found in sentences.
What is needed is a document display system that helps the reader find as well as assimilate the information he or she wants more quickly. The document display system should be easily personalizable and flexible as well.
An automatic reading assistance application for documents in electronic form is provided by virtue of the present invention. In certain embodiments, an automatic annotator is provided which finds concepts of interest and keywords. The operation of the annotator is personalizable for a particular user. The annotator is also capable of improving its performance overtime by both automatic and manual feedback. The annotator is usable with any electronic document. Another available feature is a elongated thumbnail image of all or part of a multi-page document wherein a currently displayed section of the document is emphasized in the elongated thumbnail image. Movement of the emphasized area in the elongated thumbnail image is then synchronized with scrolling through the document.
In accordance with a first aspect of the present invention, a method for annotating an electronically stored document includes steps of: accepting user input indicating user-specific concepts of interest, analyzing the electronic document to identify locations of discussion of the user-specific concepts of interest, and displaying the electronic document with visual indications of the identified locations.
In accordance with a second aspect of the present invention, a method for displaying a multi-page document includes steps of: displaying a elongated thumbnail image of a multi-page document in a first viewing area of a display, displaying a section of the multi-page document in a second viewing area of the display in legible form, emphasizing an area of the elongated thumbnail image corresponding to the section displayed in the second viewing area, accepting user input controlling sliding of the emphasized area through the thumbnail image, and scrolling the displayed section through the second viewing area responsive to the scrolling so that the emphasized area continues to correspond to the displayed section.
A further understanding of the nature and advantages of the inventions herein may be realized by reference to the remaining portions of the specification and the attached drawings.